LECTURE: Carsun Chang’s Jefferson: A Lost Era of Transnational Sino-American Constitutional Imagination with Jedidiah Kroncke (Stanford: Stanford University, 22 OCT 2024) [ONLINE]

(Image source: Wikimedia)

We learned that the next seminar of the Law and History Workshop organized by the Stanford Center for Law and History will be held on October 22nd, from 12:45-2:00PM (Pacific) in Room 320D, Stanford Law School, and via Zoom. 

Jedidiah Kroncke, Associate Professor of Law at the University of Hong Kong, will present, "Carsun Chang’s Jefferson: A Lost Era of Transnational Sino-American Constitutional Imagination,"  will present in person but participants will be able to attend either in-person or online. That said, we hope very much that you choose to attend in person if at all possible.

To RSVP, click here. Those who confirm their attendance will receive a separate email containing the paper and link to the event after the RSVP deadline.

ABSTRACT  

This article recovers a lost era of Sino-American constitutional imagination surrounding the drafting of the 1946 Republic of China Constitution. It examines the transnational dynamics that led the Constitution’s initial drafter, Carsun Chang, to travel to the U.S. in 1945 to ostensibly study the ideas of Thomas Jefferson then ascendant in New Deal constitutional rhetoric.

Recovering this episode recontextualizes Chang’s life as one of China’s new generation of cosmopolitan intellectuals moving between its contentious post-dynastic politics and the institutions of the post-World War II international legal order. Chang’s invitation involved many little known but determinative turns, including the role of a subset of Truman Administration officials actively enamored with Jefferson’s own study of Confucianism.

Transnationalizing our understanding of the 1946 Constitution reveals how the geopolitics of the Chinese Civil War intersected with the attempted overseas projection of American constitutional values increasingly embedded in American internationalism. The fallout from the drafting process also illuminates the mid-20th century transition of America from a global symbol of constitutional revolution to a global symbol of racialized empire. Recapturing this era has implications for originalist-styled constitutional arguments made in contemporary Taiwan, as well as evaluating the international dimensions of Jefferson’s problematic domestic legacy.

More information can be found here.